When the six months had gone by, he came to claim her hand. She was
quite astonished. 'You promised to marry me at the end of six months,'
he reminded her.
'Surely it isn't six months already,' she said.
He referred her to the calendar, recalled the date of her husband's
death.
'You are strangely literal for a poet,' she said. 'Of course I _said_
six months, but six months doesn't mean twenty-six weeks by the clock.
All I meant was that a decent period must intervene. But even to myself
it seems only yesterday that poor Harold was walking beside me in the
Kurhaus Park.' She burst into tears, and in the face of them he could
not pursue the argument.
Gradually, after several interviews and letters, it was agreed that they
should wait another six months.
'She _is_ right,' he reflected again. 'We have waited so long, we may as
well wait a little longer and leave malice no handle.'
The second six months seemed to him much longer than the first. The
charm of respectful adoration had lost its novelty, and once again his
breast was racked by fitful fevers which could scarcely calm themselves
even by conversion into sonnets.
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